|
Army Corps: Terminal permit decision sound
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
When it came to deciding whether to issue a permit for the planned S.C. State Ports Authority terminal at the former Charleston Naval Base in North Charleston, Lt. Col. Edward R. Fleming of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said a single, overriding question remained paramount.
“Whatever kind of a project you’re considering, whether it be a multimillion dollar container terminal or even a request for a dock permit, the one thing you always have to ask yourself is whether the information you have at your disposal is the best possible information available at the time,” Fleming said.
“You see, what I don’t think most people understand is that while we’re the permitting agency, we don’t consider ourselves the experts and judges of all or even most of the things that go into considering a permit.”
If the agencies that have the expertise and knowledge in dealing with traffic, air quality or endangered species say what the ports authority has proposed meets their standards, then the corps will allow the permitting to go forward, Fleming said.
While it is important for community groups to raise concerns about the terminal’s potential air quality and traffic impacts, Fleming said those concerns didn’t rise to the level of requiring denial of the permit in light of the extensive input of several local, state and federal governmental agencies.
“Every permit decision is a matter of balancing the public’s interest with economic development and the protection of the environment,” he said. “I’m confident we’ve made a sound decision in this case, one that weighed all of the issues and concerns presented to us during the evaluation process.”
Increasing port’s capacity
On April 26, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Charleston office released not one but three documents that will have long-term implications for the future of the terminal project and the economic vitality of the Charleston region as a whole.
The first document was the corps’ 132-page record of decision for the project. It describes in detail the project, the questions that arose with its proposal and how the various contributing agencies involved in its review answered those questions.
The other two documents, one awarded to the SPA and the other to the S.C. Department of Transportation, gave both entities permission to move forward with their respective parts of the project and established conditions for that work.
The planned port terminal at the Navy base will cover more than 286 acres, although some of that land will be used as storm water retention areas and for port support services rather than for active port operations.
“As far as its general scale and scope, it will be somewhat similar to the Wando Welch terminal in Mount Pleasant, although it will have a slightly smaller berthing area,” said SPA spokesman Byron Miller.
The berthing area at the Wando terminal is about 3,800 feet, while the berthing area at the new terminal will be 3,510 feet.
When it is completely built out, in about 20 years, the Navy base terminal will have the capacity to handle 1.4 million 20-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, of cargo a year, Miller said.
“In other words, over the life of the project it will increase the Port of Charleston’s overall capacity by about 50%,” he said.
Over the past two years, the Port of Charleston has handled just less than 2 million TEUs annually.
Permit a long time coming
The SPA originally applied for a permit for the Navy base terminal project in January 2003, but work on analyzing the proposal did not begin in earnest until a year later due to state deliberations over the scope of a consultant’s work on the project and how much it should cost, said Nathaniel Ball, the corps’ project manager for the terminal-permitting process.
Since then, scores of state, federal and local agencies participated in the process, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and the S.C. State Historic Preservation Office.
Over the course of the environmental impact study that now serves as the basis for the corps’ record of decision on the project, the agency received more than 800 comments from other agencies, local government, elected officials, citizens groups and the general public.
“We reached the decision to issue these permits by closely following the National Environmental Policy Act process, encouraging public input, consulting with our peers and looking at all data related to the proposed project,” Fleming said.
“Where agencies get into trouble and invite litigation is when they don’t adhere to the clear standards that have been set for them and allow the process to go off into tangents.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version